End of Year Review 2015

31Dec

Howdy ladies and gents, 2015 is Romeo done, and now its time for my annual END OF YEAR REVIEW! It’s the 5th edition on WordPress and I’m ready to summarise my experience in this post. While time has moved relatively fine, I swear toward the latter side of the summer till Christmas just few by absurdly quick, and here we are at the dawn of a new year. As with previous entries I will talk about the year as a whole from my perspective, breaking it down into sections and then conclude with a summary. You ready? Cool, let’s go!

Video Games

In the last two years I’ve really been getting back into my video games, but this year has been the one for catching that fever and playing several games at the same time. Again I’ve been primarily on my Nintendo stuff playing loads of Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. 4 on my Wii U. But I’ve also been playing a fair amount of Child of Light, Xenoblade Chronicles, Lego Marvel Superheros, Mario Maker and Trine 2. And I’ve been bleeding through Project X Zone, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Sonic 2 3D, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and A Link to the Past. However my favourite experience by far has been playing Xenoblade Chronicles X, I’ve only had the game for around a week now, but this game just makes me feel so satisfied when it comes to exploration, combat and sense of community when it comes to the online elements. Now obviously I don’t have a PS4, Xbox One or a fancy PC to play a lot of the awesome games that’s been released like Metal Gear Solid 5, Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight or Ori and the Blind Forest to name a few, but hopefully I’ll get around to a PS4 and some of those games next year.

Films

For me 2015 has been a pretty good year for films, and while there’s been a fair amount of disappointment, there’s also been a good deal of unexpected gems too. For all of the average/lame films that I had to watch like Terminator Genisys, Chappie and Fan4stic, we also got a Ex Machina or Black Mass. I missed a great deal of films in 2015, however, I saw as much as I could and most films delivered, though I wish I could have loved some of them more like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Spectre. So now I give you my top 10 films of the year.

Technically I did a top 10 film post already, but for those who haven’t seen it I will list it below and as usual I’m only counting films released in 2015, and films originally released in 2014 that got UK release this year DOESN’T COUNT! But with that out of the way, these are my favourite films of 2015:

Top 10 Films of 2015

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Kingsman the Secret Service

Ex Machina

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation

Straight Outta Compton

Amy

Mad Max Fury Road

Black Mass

The Martian

Ant-Man

Special Mentions

Cinderella

Sicario

Inside Out

Crimson Peak

Me and Earl and Dying Girl

Television

TV this year has been the most crammed one yet with me taking on multiple TV shows, new and old over the course of the year, sometimes overlapping several shows at the same time! One of the most heartbreaking experiences I had this year was seeing the end of Parks and Recreation with season 7. I also got to rewatch Fringe and relive all that awesomeness, and after around 2 years I finally finished the Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh and I finally finished Hotel Babylon after all this time. With Netflix and Amazon Video I really got into a good few shows like Blue Mountain State and rewatched The IT Crowd, Chappelle Show, Alpha House and Justice League. But the main show I really got into was It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it was a show that was recommended to me by my mate’s sister back in July of 2013 and I decided to binge all 9 seasons over a few weeks and it was hella fun. That show is absurdly silly and funny and is one of my new favourite shows.

On top of that in the Fall/Autumn, we got to see the return to form of with Arrow‘s 4th season, more improvements with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 3, more great material from The Flash season 2, some smart and humourous material with season 19 of South Park, the continuing awesomeness with of Grimm with season 5 and the great second of Star Wars Rebels. I will admit that my love for Game of Thrones‘s season 5 wasn’t as impressive as previous seasons improvement and while I’ve enjoyed the latest seasons of The Walking Dead and Castle I haven’t been as invested as before, especially when it comes to season 8 of Castle.

But it’s not just about continuing shows that I got into. I really enjoyed Blindspot, Agent Carter‘s first season was pretty cool, also after getting past some of the weaker episodes I really got into Moonbeam City and Master of None‘s first season was one of the most unexpected surprises of the year with its realistic take on life issues, relationships and unique style of humour with a film-like quality. But Marvel’s first two dips into the Netflix realm with Daredevil and Jessica Jones proved to be a very successful, with darker, violent and more realistic portrayals of the heroes of the MCU. I really enjoyed the violence, fight choreography and crime drama elements of Daredevil, while with Jessica Jones it wa all about the more serious and personal stories that dealt with more mature and realistic issues too.

Top 5 TV Shows

Daredevil

Master of None

Mr. Robot

Jessica Jones

Moonbeam City

Overall this year has been great for TV and I’m looking forward to the continuation of my current shows, the return of Agent Carter and Daredevil with their second seasons, and the start of Legends of Tomorrow and Luke Cage.

Music

As for music, all I can say is that 2015 has been the most disappointing year for new music I’ve seen in ages. There’s next to no new music I liked, and most of the stuff I heard that was popular just wasn’t of any interest to me at all. The only new songs I liked probably not on anyone’s radar. Firstly there’s Asian Kung-Fu Generation with “Easter” from their Wonder Future album, it’s a great opening track full of style and intensity, and the other song was “Fiesta” from Bomba Estereo featuring Will Smith, while the song definitely fits into the standard EDM style of modern music, at the same time it has a pretty nice sound, and it also helps that my man Will Smith was rapping on the track which was so much fun.

My Experience

2015, to be honest its hard to rate this year when comparing it to previous ones. There were highs and lows, and I think I’ve realised that there will be no year at this current point in my that doesn’t come without some struggle. That being said I’ve had one hell of an adventure.

I got to return to the Children’s Media Conference and make some new friends, I also went back for year two at London Film & Comic-Con and after a two-year gap I went back to the MCM London Expo too. As for other events I finally got to see Asian Kung-Fu Generation live and witnessed a kick ass Pokemon concert too. In addition to that I obtained my first long-term job that lasted longer than 6 weeks and got back into drawing in a big way for the first time in a while. But the key thing that makes me smile is the fact that I’ve been able to have such great experiences with my family and friends and that’s really helped me deal with some of the regular bullshit. Oh and the blogging, for those who read this blog on the regular you know this has been an inconsistent year when it comes to the pacing and amount of posts that I’ve done, but luckily I’ve had a lot of my regular people to help me through the slow days, and to them I thank you greatly. 🙂

Conclusion

In conclusion 2015 was a good session, but I’m ready to say goodbye to this year and welcome the next. These days I’m all about the progression and I will look back fondly on some of my adventures individually and with other people, but for all I’m gonna say is “Peace out 2015, and hello to 2016! Come on, this’ll be my time!”

Well, thanks for reading. So how was your 2015? Please be sure to comment below and finally, have a happy new year and I hopefully I’ll see ya in again 2016. Laters! 😀